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Just Who Are the

"Palestinians"?

Yair Davidy

Obadiah prophesies about what will happen in the last days, saying --

And they of the south shall possess the plain of Esau; and they of the plain the Phillis-
tines: and they shall possess the field of Ephraim, and the fields of Samaria: and Benja-
min shall possess Gilead (Obadiah 2:19).

Obadiah is speaking of a time of reconciliation between Ephraim and Judah following a victory
of theirs over a mutual enemy. "They of the south" (Hebrew: "Negev"), and "they of the plain" appar-
ently refers to different sections of the Jewish people.

It seems that "the Philistines" who will be dispossessed are the so-called Palestinian "Arabs."
Historically many of the Philistines settled in North Africa and in Europe. They had connections to
various places in Anatolia (Turkey), and linguistics indicate that the Philistines also had links to the re-
gion of Illyria (on the Yugoslavian coast). Cultural features confirm a presence of theirs at the head of
the Adriatic. Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508), who once served as State Advisor to the Republic
of Venice, said that he found in old books the belief that from the Philistines emerged the peoples of
Venice and Genoa. Both these Italian ports were once independent powerful sea-going merchant
states. The Romans (e.g. Strabo) also believed that the Venetians came from the Eneti in northeast
Anatolia (modern Turkey) who fled from the Assyrians -- and some scholars see a linkage between
that area (Cappadocia) of Anatolia and between the Philistines. The Septuagint in about 300 b.c.e.
also identified the Philistines as of Cappadocian origin.

Other Philistine elements almost certainly remained on the Palestinian coast around Gaza.

Historically, the Romans destroyed the Jewish State of Judea and killed or exiled all of its peo-
ple. The Romans wanted to wipe away all remembrance of a connection between the Jews and their
land, so they re-named all of it "Palestinia" in honour of the Philistines. The land passed into the hands
of the Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, and Turks. The Arabs and their Turkish masters had
ecologically unsound customs so the Land became desolate and very underpopulated. It has been
said that every tree in the Galilee was planted by the British since the Turks cut down all that they
found to provide fuel for their railway engines. In the 1800s the Jews -- with British encouragement
and protection -- began to return and resettle the Land, a process which culminated in the Balfour
Declaration of 1917 and the British undertaking to prepare "the establishment in Palestine of a Na-
tional Home" for the Jews.
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